10 More Stupid Things Smart IT People Still Do

by Debra Donston; illustrated by Brian Moore

1. Cast a jaded eye on emerging technologies and modes of delivering technology. Enterprise 2.0? Bah! Software as a service? Hmph! Were doing just fine with the technologies weve been using for years, thank you!

2. Ignore investment in training and professional development. The folks on your team will never leave because the job market is so bad, right? Right?

3. Keep IT budgets totally separate from facilities. After all, how much power could a few dozen itty-bitty servers possibly consume? And what difference could power-conserving technologies make?

4. Look at security purely from a technical standpoint. Your users surely know that they shouldnt be downloading sensitive data onto thumb drives. And no one, but no one, would be silly enough to click through an e-mail phish.

5. On that note, dont lock down laptops. Its way too much hassle.

6. Consider remote users the exception rather than the rule. Dont build their existence into policies, and dont hold them to the same requirements that you do in-house staff. There are only a handful of remote workers employed by yo

7. Dont let vendors set the technology timetable, but also dont stay informed about forthcoming updates and their potential benefits. Youll know the time is right to upgrade. Youll feel it in your bones.

8. Dont make time for reading news and analysis, especially for reading industry and peer-driven blogs. Who has time? What youre doing is working just fine, and you know it couldnt work any better because … well, you just know!

9. Keep evaluations of new technologies confined to the IT department. Dont reach out to business managers for their requirements. After all, the business can always adapt to the application you choose.

10. Let your disaster recovery plan lie dormant. There hasn’t been a major disaster for a while — not in your neck of the woods, anyway. So why bother to update the plan to reflect changes in business/technology/staffing/world affairs

What do you think? Did I miss anything? Let me know on my blog, and check out our original list of

• The Best IT Advice I Ever Got
• The Thirteen Scariest Things in IT<</body>